The Management Process

Week 1 Homework

Question 1: The managerial functions of planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling are central to the management process. Describe what each function involves and give an example of each.

Answer 1: Planning involves setting goals and objectives for the organization and developing work maps showing how those goals and objectives are to be accomplished (Hershey, Blanchard, and Johnson, 8). An example of this function would be an agencies operation plan which identifies the agencies goals and illustrates their plan to achieve those goals.

Organizing involves bringing together resources--people, capitol, and equipment--in the most effective way to accomplish the goals. Organizing involves integration of resources (8). An example of this would be logistics. For instance the organization I am with received a contract to repair a different type of aircraft prior to them receiving the new aircraft they had to coordinate all the logistics that would be involved in the repair. They had to ensure they had all the tools, aircraft stands that fit the fuselage, trained personnel, and funding for repair parts before they brought the first aircraft into the hangar.

Motivating plays a large part in determining the level of performance of employees, which in turn, influences how effectively the organization goals will be met (8). Motivating personnel is one of the more difficult managerial functions because everyone is different. One example of techniques used by most agencies is monetary awards and incentives and these do work to a point as long as they are fair and equitable. The award has to be comparable to the goal that is achieved and in the present economy businesses are looking for ways to decrease spending.

Controlling involves feedback of results, and follow-up to compare accomplishments with plans and to make appropriate adjustments where outcomes have deviated from expectations (8). One example of this would be in the retail sales businesses are constantly comparing previous year sales on a particular day--especially holidays--and trying to gage what they should have in store for inventory at any specific point in time they know that if.

Question 2: What types of expertise are necessary for effective human skills?

Answer 2: Managers need three levels of expertise. They must understand past and current behavior, be able to predict behavior, and learn to direct, change, and influence behavior (11).

Question 3: Why do managers study motivation and behavior?

Answer 3: Managers study motivation and behavior because it provides a framework for predicting future behavior. Understanding why persons did what they did yesterday enables a leader to more accurately predict how they are likely to behave tomorrow, next week, and next month under similar as well as changing environmental conditions.